Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/some-nature-is-better-than-no-nature-a-review-of-research-on-nature-based-early-childhood-education/5027126/
Bridging Research and Practice features varied aspects of research related to early childhood education with a reference to previously published research. Each article contains practical strategies for putting the research into action for teachers, administrators, and teacher educators.
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Nature as an Antidote to the Digitalization of Children’s Lives
Nature-based early childhood education has grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade in North America. These programs take many forms—private nature preschools and forest kindergartens, one-day-a-week-outdoors in public school kindergartens and early elementary grades, public school Head Start programs, parent and child toddlers-in-the-woods outings, and family adventure clubs.
Prior to the pandemic, parental enthusiasm for nature-based programs had been growing. Parents sought out nature-based programs because of their concern over three trends in the 21st century. First, there is the “indoorification” of children’s lives. Children do not play outdoors as much and we know that children are twice as physically active when they are outdoors compared to when they are indoors (Participaction, 2015). Second, “digitalization” is overtaking children’s waking lives. Most early elementary-aged children spend 8 eight hours a day engaged with screens—iPads, phones, computer-assisted learning, Netflix, X-Box—and 30 minutes a day outdoors ...